Todd Solondz descovers 'Happiness' after Yale

COURTESY GOOD MACHINE RELEASING Harris and Adams: a picture of 'Happiness'.

With Welcome to the Dollhouse in 1996, director Todd Solondz, TC '81, dredged the slop of suburban pubescence and created what would seem a sweet success for a self-proclaimed outcast like himself: a critically-acclaimed comedy that skewers the type of brutes who tormented him in his youth and at the same time shows he's witty enough to escape hapless self-pity. Whatever demons Solondz might have purged in Dollhouse return in a more mature form in the diseased adult world of his latest film, Happiness.

Like Dollhouse, Happiness hesitates to cast any one character as tormentor or victim and derives humor from its perfectly-pitched and ultimately sympathetic portrayal of middle-class New Jerseyites. Solondz, however, raises the emotional stakes this time around. Happiness invites sympathy, not for the sort of junior high school bullies and mean-spirited losers that fill Dollhouse, but for Bill (Dylan Baker), a family man who molests his son's 11 year-old schoolmates, and Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a would-be rapist who masturbates as he harrasses women over the phone. Never condemning or ridiculing his subject matter, Solondz uses a casual, dead-pan style that provokes as many cringes as it does laughs. Happiness gives the horrific a glaze of normalcy, making the film both a superb satire of suburban life and an unsettling testament to the resilience of this life to criticism.

Happiness' anecdotal plot lines are tied loosely together by the themes of masturbation and rape, converging on Bill whose on-screen jerk-off is a prelude to his off-screen predations. Eleven year-old Bill Jr. (Rufus Read) spends the movie trying to achieve the fire-power that his father so readily demonstrates in the back-seat of his car, one hand clutching the photograph of a teenage boy, the other writhing in his conservatively-trousered crotch. In a typically funny yet uncomfortable scene, we see the pedophile giving unflappable advice on "coming" to his pre-ejaculatory son. "Dickwad?" says Bill Jr., groping for clarity. "Yes," replies his father as the lush strings of the soundtrack rise, "only `come' can be used as a verb as well."

Bill's beautiful sister-in-law Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) becomes a literary darling for Pornographic Childhood, a poetry collection that includes the pieces "Rape at Eleven" and "Rape at Twelve." But she's never been raped, and so she invites the chronic-masturbator Allen to come to her apartment and violate her in an attempt to invest her work with authenticity. Allen, meanwhile, has won the affection of a legitimate but unglamorous rape victim who lives across the hall.

In a movie where sex is either lonely or degraded, Bill's other sister-in-law Joy (Jane Adams), comes the closest to having a healthy relationship. Joy, who would be charming if she weren't so helpless, falls for Vlad, the Russian immigrant performed with leering charisma by Jared Harris.

Solondz is at his best when he's most autobiographical. He's a connoisseur of suburban tawdriness and passive-aggression, recreating the world of family rooms, polyester pajamas, and anti-drug cant with the confidence of someone born and bred in a New Jersey bedroom community. Having spent six years in New York City teaching English to recently arrived immigrants from Syria and Russia, he's similarly adept at portraying the motley, under-funded realm of Joy's workplace, the American Center for Refugee Training and Education.

Solondz falters, however, in his treatment of the posh Helen. She's a muddled cartoon--a poet, but also a power elite ice-queen, swarmed by glistening hulks with names like Lorenzo and Flavio, one of whom lies on her bed lifting weights as she discusses her other boyfriends over the phone. None of this rings true. Solondz loses his satirical edge with Helen and begins pandering to a base resentment of easy success and sexual confidence.

What's most unsettling about Happiness is that no one is any worse off at the end of the movie than at the beginning. The film's outrages and traumas leave no lasting marks. Bill's victims either don't remember being attacked or don't appear on-screen. After Bill's spurt of rapes, his family continues to have bland, catty dinner conversations, more concerned with the death of a Tamogatchi toy than with their recent intimacy with brutality. Bill Jr. dutifully continues trying to come.

The habits, distractions, and impulses of suburbia seem to wrap each character in a Teflon coat. Atrocities peel off their bland exteriors without leaving a stain and, more importantly, without inciting a moment of self-awareness. With its slow pace and objective approach, the film treats taboos in an offhand way, seeming to suggest that the neuroses, deviancies, and cruelties it depicts are the inevitable, unchangeable way of the world. Happiness is just as concerned with cataloging middle class sordidness as it is with showing how easily this sordidness is ignored.

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• The official Happiness site from Good Machine Films

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